


Sisterhood of the Hopefully Delicious Family Recipes

by Kiiratam



Category: RWBY
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, F/F, Fluff, Food, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24213169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiratam/pseuds/Kiiratam
Summary: Yang and Ruby make pizza from their Mom's recipe.Takes place during Volume 5, between Chapters 8 and 11. (My BMBLB fic index)
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 22
Kudos: 50





	Sisterhood of the Hopefully Delicious Family Recipes

"Hey sis? What are we having for dinner?" Ruby didn't want to assume anything - but since Yang had come back, she and Weiss had begun a tyrannical reign of meal planning, and it was getting towards dinner time, and Yang _was_ standing in the kitchen, looking at her scroll. Besides, Ren had made dinner yesterday, so it was Yang's turn. Or it was everyone's turn, but Ruby couldn't find any of that out if she didn't ask. Even though she _also_ knew that by asking, she was risking getting dragooned into helping.

  
Yang looked up with her 'ah-ha, my next victim!' face on, and Ruby resigned herself to not getting back to her comics until bedtime.

  
"I thought we could try something new."

  
Ruby steeled herself. Yang... didn't have the best track record with new stuff. Especially casseroles, and baked stuff, and she _could_ make bread, but sometimes it turned out like a giant crouton... Yang was solid on cookies, at least. 

  
Buuuuuuut, they weren't going to have cookies for dinner, so Ruby walked right into the trap that she knew, from experience, was waiting. "What are we making?" Please don't be meatloaf. Not again.

  
"Pizza!" Yang said with a big grin. 

  
Ruby hadn't been expecting that. Yang didn't smile nearly as much as she had, and Ruby hadn't realized how much she'd missed it. The room felt brighter, all of the sudden, and Ruby found herself matching her sister's smile.

  
Even if... a memory tickled its way out of the back of Ruby's head. "Wait, Mom's pizza? The one Dad never made, even when I found it in the recipe book, and bugged him all day about it, but Dad just took us to Virgil's instead?" Her tummy rumbled. "Quiet, you."

  
Yang's grin got a little lopsided, kind of like Weiss' 'Ruby's a dolt' face, but Ruby knew that wasn't Yang really meant with that face at all, it wasn't tied to people being dumb at all - Yang's 'you're an idiot, but I'm going to be polite' face had a much bigger grin, for one.

  
But Yang just nodded, and her smile went back to being on both sides. "Yeah. I wanted pizza, but Weiss ran the numbers and we would've had to switch to protein bars and lettuce for a week to make up for store pizza. So I volunteered us to make it from scratch."

  
"The pizza that we've never actually made."

  
Yang waggled her scroll. "We have a _family recipe_ , Ruby. We'll figure it out."

  
Pushing up her sleeves, Ruby started for the aprons. Reason wasn't going to work here; Yang was determined to make pizza, and complaining about it wasn't going to help. "Do we have everything?"

  
"Oh yeah, I added everything to the list when we went shopping."

  
"Toppings?" Ruby pulled on an apron - not Ren's, but he was the only one who'd brought his, so it didn't really matter who had which one. It wasn't like Yang had brought her apron to Beacon, so it wasn't that unusual that she also wouldn't bring it all the way to Mistral. Especially since it was really Mom's apron, because of the roses, but Ruby could only remember Yang in it. So it was floral print for Ruby, and plain black for Yang.

  
"Well, I got olives, and pineapple, and mushrooms, just for you."

  
"Ewwwwww." Ruby darted a glance at her sister's face, hoping that she was joking.

  
She was.

  
"What did you really get?"

  
"Cheeeeeeeeese." At least Yang had the important topping. "And peppers, and pepperoni, and I wanted to get pepperoncini for maximum confusion, but Weiss said no."

  
Ruby nodded. "Too spicy for her."

  
Yang snorted. "So one cheese, two pepperoni, one green pepper and mushroom."

  
"That's... a lot of pizza, sis."

  
"There are a lot of us. You, me, Weiss, Nora, Ren, Jaune, Oscar, and Qrow."

  
Trying not to think about the names missing from that list, Ruby pulled out her scroll. "Send me the recipe?"

  
"I just took a picture of the page from the cookbook." Yang sent it over, and Ruby started reading it. "I'm going to get ingredients and utensils."

  
Nodding absently, Ruby leaned on the counter, peering at the recipe. It seemed pretty straightforward. Not like Mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe, which was more notation that recipe. They were perfect if you followed the recipe exactly, and knew all the secret lore that hadn't actually been written down. Ruby still wasn't sure how much Yang had learned directly, and what Dad had helped with, and what Yang had figured out herself. But for pizza - apart from some scribbled notes on calzones that had an awful lot of question marks - it was just bread, really. Bread and sauce and toppings.

  
Ruby looked up at the oven. "Can we _fit_ four pizzas in there?"

  
With a clatter, Yang straightened from where she'd been rummaging. "We don't have four pizza pans, so it doesn't matter. Cookie sheets?"

  
"Um. Flat ones? No lip?" That ought to work. Unless there was a breach in one of the sides of the pizzas, and everything spilled out into the oven, and there was fire and disaster and-

  
After some inspection and test-fitting, they found four pans that all fit in the oven at the same time. They weren't all the same size, so that was going to introduce more variability into the recipe - but that could be helpful, as long as none of them were a disaster. They could test, and annotate.

  
Yang came over and set two big bowls down. "Do you want the metal one, or plastic?"

  
"Um, plastic." It didn't really matter to Ruby, but when Yang offered her choices, Ruby had learned that not having an opinion didn't really help anything. Neither of them really had to _care_ , but they did have to decide, and it was easiest to just get that out of the way. "We're each doing a double batch, so you get the yeast, I'll get the flour?" The yeast was a precise measurement, the flour was a range. Ruby wanted to eliminate the 'what if' of if Yang put the maximum amount of flour, and Ruby put the minimum.

  
It was still odd having Yang back. Mostly back. A Yang back, even if it wasn't the same Yang that Ruby had left behind. But... and even in her own head, Ruby hated to admit it, but... that Yang hadn't seemed like Yang at all. It _was_ , it had still been her sister - it. Yang. Yang was Yang. Yang couldn't ever not be Yang. But Yang wasn't a constant, and Past!Yang and Present!Yang were different Yangs, so there was a continuity of Yangs, but Ruby hadn't been around to see Past!Yang become Present!Yang, and this was the longest they'd ever been apart, and Yang was still Yang, but Ruby had lost the thread of Yang, so it was just a matter of finding Yang again.

  
And now Yang the name sounded weird and alien in Ruby's head, and that had never happened before -

  
Yang the sister and not the nonsense sound that didn't mean anything interrupted. "Mix?"

  
"Oh! Yeah, just a bit. What kind of oil do you think we should use?"

  
"I mean, pizza. Olive."

  
"Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Dumb question."

  
Yang shrugged. "I mean, not really. It doesn't say." She went browsing for oil. "We're going to need more veggie oil."

  
Ruby wasn't sure why Yang was telling _her_ that. She didn't write the shopping lists. Maybe Yang was hoping she'd tell Weiss.

  
The recipe said they needed hot water, and gave a temperature range. Thermometer, then. Ruby realized that, for the first time, she could actually have used the fancy 'set your desired water temperature' kettle that had been in the kitchenette back at Beacon. Blake and Ren had used it all the time for their tea, but Ruby had just used the coffee-maker. And, of course, because she could have used it, she didn't have it.

  
But it was okay. As Yang mixed one bowl, then the other, and got the olive oil all ready, Ruby sat there with the thermometer under running water, until it was Just Right. She measured out the water, and added it to both bowls. And Yang added the olive oil, and then they made with the spooning to mix everything up.

  
"High speed, thirty seconds." Ruby told her sister, and they stirred frantically. This would be a lot easier with an electric mixer, but they'd never had one back home, and there wasn't one here, so there wasn't much point in being sad about how much work it was. "Still fast, three minutes." Ruby changed arms, because it wasn't the same as spinning Crescent Rose at all. So many muscles, and they all did different things, and they never seemed to overlap much.

  
"You sure about this, sis? It looks really thin." Yang lifted her spoon to demonstrate, but the mixture just stuck to the spoon. "Okay, not thin, just really sticky."

  
"We're adding a bunch more flour. As much as we can." Ruby started scooping more flour into their bowls. "Let me know when you've got all that mixed in."

  
Yang, with her big strong stirring arms, was getting the flour mixed in a lot faster than Ruby. She'd wanted to keep them at the same amount, but that wasn't working. Especially since Ruby kept stopping to add more flour, and Yang could just mix mix mix.

  
"Switch?" Of course, Yang had noticed that.

  
"Sure." Ruby re-assigned her flour tracking to the bowls, instead of the mixer, and gave the dough in the metal bowl an experimental poke.

  
"It's aliiiiive!" Yang moaned in her schlocky horror announcer voice. Another thing that Ruby hadn't realized she was missing: silly sister voices.

  
Trying to do a long-suffering-Weiss-sigh, Ruby added more flour to Yang's bowl, and sprinkled some on the counter. And got her hands good and floured up before dumping out the dough.

  
"You're doing it wrong."

  
"I haven't even done anything!" Ruby tried to give her sister The Look, because her hands were covered in flour, so she couldn't just punch her.

  
"But sis, you need to knead dough with your knees, not your hands."

  
Maybe if Ruby just worked the dough, and didn't acknowledge the puns, Yang's pun smirk would go away. Eleventy-zillionth time was the charm.

  
She wanted to say she hadn't missed the puns. Almost did. But Yang loved puns. If Ruby said she hadn't missed the puns, had she really missed Yang? She had, she really had, but what if she said it wrong, and Yang got hurt again and - 

  
Ruby concentrated on her dough. Her hands were starting to stick, so she put more flour on them, working more into the dough, getting it all tasty and glutenous.

  
"Did you just donate a bunch of words to Ren? Is that why he started talking?"

  
Yang had noticed. Of course she had, Yang always noticed. Super big sister senses. 

  
"No, I mean, well, he talks a lot more about wilderness survival, and he and Nora had to teach me and Jaune a lot, so he talked a lot more, and I-" Ruby forced the words out before she could worry about them. "-I missed you."

  
Having dumped her own dough out, and also vexed with flour-and-dough-hands, Yang leaned over to bump her head into Ruby's. "I missed you too."

  
"You've got a really hard head." It was true.

  
"You too, milk-brain. We'll train headbutts tomorrow."

  
Ruby stifled a giggle. Butts. 

  
"Ack, why is mine still sticky?" Yang lifted her new hand, and half of the dough came with it.

  
"More flour." Ruby scooped it off the counter, and sprinkled it over Yang's dough. "A _lot_ more. 'Smooth and elastic' is what the recipe says. Yours is still shiny." She didn't think the recipe was really designed to be kneaded with an artificial hand, but Yang hadn't let that stop her, so they had to deal with it. 

  
"How long do we have to do this?"

  
Ruby glanced at her scroll, sitting on the counter. "At least five more minutes."

  
Her sister made a disgusted noise.

  
"Just pretend you're giving your dough a backrub or something." It was weird how Yang could be really patient with people, and Bumblebee, but not with food. Or art stuff, or game prep. Ruby wasn't sure what it was - it was really easy for her to just focus on what she was doing, and all the details of it, and time just flew by. Or crawled, sometime, but she could just tell herself that it was like waiting for the perfect shot, and you had to pause and settle in, and be ready and wait wait wait and then BLAM! It was over!

  
But Yang didn't do that. Or at least she didn't seem to think about it the same way. It wasn't about waiting for the perfect moment, because she was in the thick of things. It was about making a good enough moment. Not that Ruby didn't have to settle for good enough sometimes! But Yang, in melee, had a lot more control over what her opponent was doing. At long range, Ruby had to work with what happened.

  
It wasn't like they were unrelated. But it was a big slidey scale, and Ruby and Yang were on different ends of it. 

  
And - Ruby glanced at her sister - now Yang was being quiet, her smile almost gone.

  
Yang usually got grinny and chatty when she was focusing. Like she'd been doing. Was this just new Yang, with a new serious face? But she'd just been silly! Did she hate kneading that much?

  
Ruby didn't know. She needed something to talk about. Anything.

  
"I wonder if Uncle Qrow knows anything about this recipe. I mean, he has to, right?"

  
"I dunno, sis. I've only ever seen him make breakfast. "

  
Good, Yang was talking again. And even smiling a little bit. "What about brinner?" Ruby just had to keep it up.

  
Yang rolled her eyes. "That's still breakfast-y food."

  
"Whaaat? No, it isn't." Ruby flipped her dough over, dusting it with some more flour.

  
"It's just breakfast for dinner. That's what the word means."

  
"How can my own sister be so _wrong_? You have to get a lot fancier for brinner!" Yang was sticking again, so Ruby dumped out some more flour for her. "Breakfast is just stick a piece of toast in your mouth and run! Brinner takes technique!"

  
"Orrrrrrrr, it's just breakfast, if you wake up early and have time and energy."

  
Ruby scoffed at that. "Nope!" She needed to use examples to demonstrate how wrong Yang was. "Okay, so - Uncle Qrow will just crack an egg into his mouth for breakfast. And, like, maybe follow it with a dash of hot sauce."

  
"Thanks, sis, I try to forget about that."

  
"Oh, and milk, of course."

  
"Straight from the jug."

  
"It tastes better that way!"

  
Yang shook her head. "See, Ruby, this is why Weiss has her own milk jug."

  
"No, that's because she's a weirdo who likes milk-flavored water." Ruby shook her head. "Skim milk. What even?" ...She had gotten turned around. What was she talking about?

  
Fortunately, Yang prompted her. "Qrow, breakfast, brinner?"

  
"Oh, right, thanks. But for _brinner_ , he'll make these elaborate six-egg omelettes with, like, cheese, and chives, and bacon, and mushrooms, and spices, and stuff! Because it isn't breakfast at all!"

  
"So, if I make you an omelette tomorrow morning, you'll ask why I'm serving you dinner food?"

  
"Yes!" Ruby added, "And also I'd wonder why you're up so early. Because you've been going to bed after me." She didn't want to say she was worried about her sister, but she _did_ wonder if Yang was getting enough sleep. Because she looked tired a lot. And Ruby knew Yang had been having nightmares last year, and she wasn't sure if they were still going on, or- Before she could start to worry too much about that - Yang was still doing fine in practice, and she was an adult, she could have a weird sleep schedule if she wanted - Ruby said, "Okay, almost done with kneading." She made herself stop working her dough, and went to get a knife as Yang finished. Ruby cut her dough in half and spaced them out a bit. And waited, knife in hand.

  
"Thanks, sis, that's not creepy at all."

  
"It's a butter knife! ...Are you done, though?"

  
Yang did her lightly annoyed scowl down at her dough. "Yeah, I guess. It's not sticky anymore, and I got the flour clumps unclumped."

  
Splitting Yang's dough too, Ruby ask, "Can you find a towel? We're supposed to cover it to let it rise."

  
"Yeah, one sec."

  
While Yang went hunting through the drawers, Ruby turned the oven on. Mom had actually written 'Preheat oven here' into the recipe, and drawn a little arrow. With a triangle attached to the tail, not just an angle and a tail. Ruby wasn't actually sure if she'd started drawing her arrows like that because that was how Yang did it, or because that was how Mom did it, or if it was just more clear than the other way.

  
Yang tossed a couple of towels over all the dough. "I'll spray the pans."

  
"Okay." Ruby started grabbing toppings out of the fridge. Pepper, pepperoni - not that they needed to refrigerate that - pre-sliced mushrooms - less prep work! - cheese? "Why did you get block cheese? The recipe says shredded."

  
"Oh, Weiss had a whole thing about pre-shredded cheese not melting well. So we got block cheese."

  
More prep work. "Great." 

  
"That's the plan!"

  
Ruby's hands were full, and she didn't want a food fight (mainly because she was getting hungry), so she decided that Yang would have to grate the cheese as punishment. She gave Yang the 'aaaaargh, puns' face, and passed her the stack of cheese blocks. "Twelve cups of cheese."

  
"So all of it?"

  
"Yeeeeeah, pretty much."

  
They worked in silence for a few minutes, Yang grating, Ruby washing the veggies - sure, the mushrooms said they were pre-washed, but another wash wouldn't hurt - and dicing the pepper.

  
Yang spoke up. "Best part of the new arm. Never have to worry about grating my fingers."

  
"I thought the best part was the shotgun." Were they talking about Yang's arm now? Was that okay? Ruby hadn't wanted to really bring it up - sure, Yang had shown it off to everyone when she'd first arrived, and she hadn't said anything to Ruby about it changing her fighting style - but they hadn't _talked_ talked about it.

  
"There are a lot of best parts. No-slip grip! Dishwasher safe!"

  
"...It is?"

  
"I mean, I've gone swimming with it. And it's proofed against thermal shock. And the socket's shielded." Yang snorted. "The manual didn't say, but I think it's a safe bet."

  
Ruby just shook her head, imagining Nora's reaction to opening the dishwasher and seeing an arm. "Kiiiiinda weird, sis."

  
"I'm a cyborg and my soul gives me superpowers. Normal is for other people."

  
"Oh, oh! We need to get you some spares! Think of all the cool Hallowe'en costumes you can do now! Like, you can do the 'peel your skin off and show off your cyborg endoskeleton' thing in real life!"

  
"Think I can get Weiss to help me with the accent?"

  
"I don't even know if she's seen the movie." Ruby shook her head. "Maybe if we agree to do her opera thing, she'll actually do horror movie night with us."

  
Yang grunted and shrugged. And Ruby felt like a dummy, because Yang had started horror movie night and it had turned into a whole floor thing pretty quickly (apart from Weiss, who had found other things to do, and Jaune, who got queasy), but it had just been Yang and Blake at first. And if there was anything that made Yang go back to how she had been right after the fall of Beacon, it was mentioning Blake.

  
It was just... Ruby couldn't just pretend that RWBY was RWY. The B was important, because otherwise, it would just be 'roo-eee', and that wasn't a word at all. Blake was important. Even if Ruby didn't know where she was, or what she was doing, or if she was okay. Blake wasn't always great about talking, but she was a really good fighter, just as flexible as Gambol Shroud. And she was brave, and smart, and basically a ninja. After Haven was safe, Ruby wanted to go find Blake and get her back. She was sure Ozpin and Uncle Qrow and Professor Lionheart could handle everything without them for a bit. ...Though maybe they should stay in Haven long enough to take their Huntress certification? ...No, she was getting ahead of herself. They still had a year of classes left. But all of Haven's teachers seemed busy, so who knew what was going to happen. Maybe they'd try to re-open Beacon soon? Or just have advanced classes at Signal?

  
Ruby finished with the pepper. Yang wasn't even halfway done yet. "Want me to help?"

  
"I got it."

  
They _did_ still have time. Ruby reread the recipe a few times, as the oven temperature crept up, Yang grated, and the dough rose.

  
At least, it should be rising. She couldn't really tell under the towel.

  
"I'm going to mix up the sauce."

  
Yang made a noise of agreement.

  
There wasn't much to it. Tomato sauce, olive oil, basil, oregano, garlic, stir stir stir. But it filled the time until the oven beeped, and dough had risen.

  
"So what, we just roll it out?" Why was Yang asking her?

  
"I guess? Try to get it the right size to fit?" Ruby started flattening and stretching one of her dough balls. She knew that they did the pizza dough toss thing at Virgil's, but she didn't want to drop it. Or even why they tossed it. Just showing off? It wasn't like getting the dough airborne was going to make it suck in air or something. "Unless we want to make them all round."

  
"Nah, I like the center pieces in rectangular pizzas."

  
"But there's nothing to hold on to."

  
"Sis, I don't mean to scare you, but you can eat pizza with a fork and knife. Mom did."

  
"Wait, do _you_ remember Mom making pizza?"

  
Yang just shrugged. "Maybe? I know I helped her grate cheese, and I got to play with dough with her help. And I remember thick-crusted pizza that Dad cut up for me."

  
"Why are you letting me tell you what to do, then? I don't actually know this recipe."

  
"Because you're good at being in charge." Snorting, Yang added, "And you're a lot better at baking than me. You actually follow directions. Oh, grapes." Yang had stretched her dough too much, and a little hole had torn in the center.

  
"Um, just set it down on the pan, and squish the dough around a bit to fill it. We're supposed to poke it anyway, so a little hole won't matter."

  
Ruby got her first pizza down on the pan, and leaned over to watch Yang. She was getting it, slowly working the surrounding dough to seal the breach. Grabbing the only actual pizza pan, Ruby started shaping her dough to fit.

  
"Hey, didn't the recipe have a stuffed crust option?"

  
Trying to smooth out a lopsided edge of her pizza, Ruby didn't look up. "Yeah, but it didn't give details. Just 'stuff crust if desired,' and Mom hadn't added anything. We can look stuff up for next time."

  
"Oh, okay." Yang got started on her second pizza. 

  
"So we poke them, bake the crusts, add the toppings, bake it more, eat."

  
"Good plan, sis."

  
Ruby ran through the toppings list as she got a fork and got to poking. "I made the sauce, you grated all the cheeses -"

  
"Solid B, B+. Maybe a low A."

  
She never ran out of puns. "- pepperoni's ready, peppers are diced, mushrooms are washed and dried."

  
"Anything else?"

  
"Weiss said she was going to do a salad."

  
Ruby sighed. "So she's going to need help." At least there weren't any curtains to catch fire. And Weiss knew how to wash and cut veggies. She just wasn't fast at it.

  
"Yup."

  
"Go get her, I'm going to put everything in the oven."

  
"Sure thing, sis." Yang rinsed her hands off, and headed for the living room.

  
With all the pizza crusts ready, Ruby shuffled them all next to the oven, and crammed them all inside. It was a tight fit, but they _did_ fit. With some room to get bigger, even. Nice and cozy.

  
JNR and RWY. Both with three people, where they should be four. Not cozy anymore. Even if Oscar was starting to fit in, with Jaune helping him learn a lot, because his memory of learning the basics was most recent, and Pyrrha had been a really good teacher. And Nora and Ren were there to show off power and finesse. And Yang and Weiss, too, now. Plenty of good examples, and teamwork. One big team.

  
But Ruby would have liked it to be bigger.

  
She set a timer for the pizza, and prepared herself to deal with the upcoming Weiss crisis. Weisis. Cweissis. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if anyone reads fanfic for recipes, but if you do, have a pizza recipe.
> 
> In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 1/4 c. flour (6.75 oz) and 1 T. active dry yeast. Stir in 1 c. warm water (115-120 °F) and 2 T. olive oil. Beat for 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat an additional 3 minutes at high speed. Stir in an additional 1 1/4 c. -1 3/4 c. flour, or as much as you can mix in with a spoon. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in enough flour to make a moderately stiff dough that is smooth and elastic (6-8 min total). Cover dough with a towel, and let rest 10 min.
> 
> Preheat oven to 425 °F. Grease pizza pans or baking sheet (I use olive oil, but cook spray works fine). Transfer dough, spreading to edges of pan. Build the edges up slightly, and use a fork to puncture the dough in the center several times (to prevent the center from doming). Optional: stuff crust by wrapping the edges of the dough around desired cheese. I use mozzarella, cut into 1/4"x 1/4"x 2" stripes. Be careful not to let the dough get too thin around the cheese, or it'll leak out. Bake 12 min, or until slightly browned.
> 
> Spread 8 oz tomato sauce over hot crust.* Sprinkle on dried basil and oregano, 2-3 c. of desired cheese blend (mozzarella and parmesan, freshly grated), and any other desired toppings (tomatoes, fresh basil and/or oregano, olives, green peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni, barbecued chicken, whatever). Return to oven and bake an additional 10-15 min., or until cheese bubbles.
> 
> Let sit for 2-5 minutes before cutting. This is a thicker pizza, so you may actually need to use utensils. Or you could just get a bigger pizza pan and stretch the dough out more.
> 
> *Lately, I've been using about 4 oz tomato sauce, and mixing in 1/2 oz olive oil, and about 1/4 T. each of basil, oregano and garlic. Less sauce means the toppings are less likely to slide off.
> 
> Calzones are a field of ongoing study.


End file.
